Saying F instead of TH

I was just looking at some recent messages, and there was one about speech, and it got me thinking the number of times my DH and I correct our son for not saying TH. Example, one, two, free.......frow the ball....

Yet he says "with" no problem and Thursday ok. Anyone had similar issue, and does it just stop or will he always say it?

How old are your DCs? My DD is nearly 5 and often says f instead of th. She calls her child minder Beff instead of Beth. She often says duh instead of the. Hopefully they will all grow out of it at some stage. She can make the proper sounds if reminded. We're not at the spelling stage yet so haven't experienced that.

It's very very common. DS3 has verbal Dyspraxia - his speech is (most of the time) pretty sorted now, but he cannot differentiate between TH and F. When I raised this as a problem, the SALT said that lots of children without speech disorders would be having the same problem at his age.

But when you notice, correct him. TH has the tongue poking out between the teeth, a different mouth shape for F - get him to work out which it should be, and he'll start to hear the difference more.

That's helpful, Hassled, thanks. dd is 7.5, and her teacher has asked about it recently - it does interfere with some of her spellings, which are otherwise naturally pretty good. She has always said 'duh' instead of 'the', and as she's bilingual (French/English) we always thought it was a French accent - but now I think its more than that. Will start addressing it, I think, gently.

My 7 yo does this when spelling words phonetically that she doesn't know. I blame my southern accent. She too is bilingual french/english. We had friends to visit and were trying to decipher "Maffiou" It was Matthew....

Just tried talking to dd about it - she got very defensive to start with ('I don't WANT to say 'th', its SPITTY' ) but then said 'th' without any trouble at all, and surprised herself and ended up laughing. I was relieved to see she could, in fact, pronounce it - clearly just a habit, so will start working on it.

Agree with Blackeyedsusan -- Correction just becomes annoying for a child if it happens all the time. It's not going to help and will just add to everyone's frustration levels. Don't be so anxious, and model the correct pronunciation very clearly when you speak.

Doesn't it depend on whether it is actually a difficulty in making the "th" sound, or whether it is a "regional accent".

Many of the lapses my children have "in" instead of "ing" being the most noticeable one, I pull them up on. I presume if I keep trying they will eventually "speak properly" . If they genuinely had difficulty with the sound I would deal with it differently.

I'm Irish, by the way, and one of my pet hates is the word throat pronounced "trouth". FFS, if you can say both the t sound and the th sound, why get them reversed so consistently .

This totally winds me up too and luckily Ds speaks properly and always has. Dd on the other hand has a lisp and cannot 'th' at all. or 'r' makes me very sad, but I can accept that she can't help it, though having said that, I do try to teach her to shape and situate her tongue to say these sounds.

It just does seeker. She has fantastic vocabulary for a 4yo and I'm a bit of a stickler for correct English, so to hear her f instead of th tightens my stomach a bit. I am more accepting of it now because I realise that it's the lisp and not just copying her peers. I am grateful that she says little and not li-ule (can't begin to think how to spell that).Anyway, I'm going to take her to a speech therapist to see if I can help her any more than I am trying to already.

I was about 8 before I could reliably say "th" and still have to take a run at some words - fortunately words I don't have to say very often - thistle and isthmus being prime examples! But I was never made to feel that I was somehow talking wrong - I'm sure that would have been very damaging to my confidence.

Honestly, acknoqledge that it's your problem, not hers. Listen to what she's saying and not hwo she's sayingit and relax.